


Last Dog Watch Off Miami

by Reremouse (TheBelfry)



Series: Florida Verse [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M, Seasickness, chum, seagulls - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBelfry/pseuds/Reremouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere off the coast of Miami, Xander kills time feeding the gulls.  Spike doesn't get seasick.  Xander is incapable of romance and a connoisseur of dead guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Dog Watch Off Miami

Xander would be dipping his toes in the water if the boat wasn't too tall.

And if he wasn't pretty sure there's sharks in the water.

There might not actually be sharks in the water but in a boat off Miami, Xander's gonna be playing it careful guy. Thank god they're far enough from land he doesn't have to worry about crocodiles too.

Just seagulls.

He rips another piece off a Day Old, $2 A Bag! bagel and tosses it over the rail.

He watches the gulls fight over it.

One of these days there'll be blood.

A gull eyes him from along the deck and sidles closer.

Xander pulls the bag into his lap.

He is kind of counting on the blood there will be not being _his_ blood though. "Aren't you supposed to eat fish?" He asks the gull.

"It's a sodding sky rat. It'll eat anything," Spike calls from the cabin.

"Except demons," Xander points out.

He can't hear Spike muttering but he'd bet anything Spike is. Probably about how much dead demons stink.

Because they do.

Which is why Xander's up here and not down there. "Maybe half an hour until sunset," Xander guestimates.

"About fucking time," is all he gets out of Spike.

It'd actually solve a lot of their problems if seagulls _did_ eat demons.

He tosses a whole bagel into the water to see the carnage. Wasn't feeding the birds supposed to be a nice, wholesome pastime?

Because it isn't.

"Do vampires get seasick?"

"No." Spike mutters a mutter loud enough for Xander to hear, "Unlike wankers."

"I heard that," Xander says because he's pretty sure he was meant to. Of course, Spike wouldn't admit to getting seasick if he did.

Spike wouldn't admit to getting seasick if he was leaning over the rail chumming the water.

Xander folds the top of the bagel bag down tightly and tosses it into the deck cabin so _he'll_ have something to chum the water with later because seasickness is actually worse when it's dry heaves.

And Xander does get seasick.

The seagull gives him the evil eye and flies away.

"What was that saying? Red sky at night, sailor's delight?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because there are going to be some seriously delighted sailors tonight if that's true."

"I'll be delighted when I'm not sharing a cabin with a corpse."

"Says the dead guy," Xander says because Spike's belowdeck and can't reach him to smack him. It's satisfying as always.

"Fuck off."

"Granted, you do smell a lot better than the extra corpsey corpse down there."

There's a weighted pause. Xander fills it with enjoying the sunset and warming his toes on the hull.

"Notice how I smell, do you?"

"You could say I'm a connoisseur."

"Aren't you afraid the _extra corpsey corpse_ might contaminate me?" Spike asks with an admittedly improved American accent.

"Nah. You're washable."

There's grumbling of the inarticulate kind. And then, "Don't need to make me sound like some kind of...teddybear."

"Teddybear?" Xander squints away from the setting sun. "Your brain went straight to teddybear?"

" _Wash_ able?"

"Because my thoughts went straight to sex toy," Xander admits. "Of the safe to use in water kind. And then I kinda went on a little daydreamy tangent involving washing you. All over. I could get behind that." Xander reconsiders his wording but decides it's good. "I'd be very thorough."

"How's that sunset coming along?"

"Sailor's delightfully. I give it another five minutes unless you want to parboil."

"Fuck," Spike says with feeling. "He stinks."

"Yeah, well, dead guys do get pretty ripe. Even when they're demony."

"This one could've at least had the decency to _look_ like a sodding demon."

" _You_ don't look like a demon."

There's a _grr_.

"Okay, you don't always look like a demon," Xander concedes.

"So? I'd have the decency to _poof_. None of this sailing out into the middle of the ocean to dump the body in the night bollocks with vampires."

The thought of Spike _poof_ ing is unpleasant. Xander skips over it. "We're not exactly in the _middle_ of the ocean. And anyway, I thought you were romantic. Think of it as a moonlit cruise."

"With a bloke who gets seasick."

"Sun's down."

"Yeah, that's sodding romantic," Spike says from right next to him and Xander credits a long and checkered history with not _eep_ ing.

He sniffs. "Good news. You don't smell like dead demon."

"Romance is utterly beyond you." Spike sits down on the deck next to him. "You know that?"

"Sure. But I'm an easy lay." Xander leans against Spike and shares some of that pre-sunset warmth with his personal dead guy.

"There's that," Spike agrees.

Eventually, while they wait for the night to be dark enough to dump a corpse, Xander says, "Since we've established romance is utterly beyond me," he says in an English accent that's probably more realistic than Spike's, "would you settle for a long and leisurely fuck under the stars? Y'know - after we dump dead guy."

Spike looses a long-suffering sigh. "Suppose I'll have to, won't I?"

"Sucks to be you," Xander agrees.

The night is warm, dark and clear. They dump dead guy and let the boat drift.

And they're not exactly sailors.

But Xander'd call the expedition pretty full of delight.

"Ever been to the Bahamas?" Spike asks eventually while Xander's still out of breath.

"Nuh," Xander says.

Spike rolls over on his side and runs a finger down Xander's neck. "Fancy a holiday?"

"Vacation," Xander corrects. "And sure."

"No. Romance." Xander can't see Spike's eyes but he's pretty sure Spike just rolled them.

"Great fuck, though," Xander reminds him again.

"Don't know how I cope."

" _Really_ great."

"Wouldn't go _that_ far."

"I would." Xander grins at him. "Repeatedly."

"And in varied positions," Spike finishes for him.

"Pretty much."

It's a partnership.

It works.

And it's theirs.


End file.
